WHY THE DEMAND FOR AFRICAN-AMERICAN
REPARATIONS IS A STRATEGIC DEMAND?
In the Twenty-first Century, the majority of African-Americans
still find themselves confronted with a very perplexing dilemma:
on the one hand, the long and difficult struggle to obtain “civil
rights” equal to white people has been won, and decisively so,
from a “legal” perspective; but, on the other hand, the social
and economic conditions afflicting the majority of African-Americans
are similar to the majority of African people in other parts
of the world have basically remained unchanged.
We believe that the present dilemma confronting African-Americans
can only be understood by a relatively comprehensive knowledge
of our “collective history,” combined with the knowledge of
the origins and operations of the “system of capitalism” and
its international form (often referred to as “imperialism”)
- which have generated both poverty and powerlessness among
African people, on the one hand, and tremendous wealth and political
power of white people in Europe and America, on the other. In
the absence of major changes in how the world’s wealth is distributed,
the vast majority of people on this planet are entering this
new Century still poverty stricken and denied opportunities
to fulfil basic human needs and aspirations.
The fact that the current political and economic institutions
of Europe and America were fashioned in the 17th Century has
sinister implications and should be of major concern to all
people of color - since these institutions were originally designed
by white people for white people only. It was just recently
that they were literally compelled to accept the notion that
“all people” (including people of color) were created “free”
and “equal.”
The New Panther Vanguard Movement’s ‘Intercommunal Reparations
Campaign’ takes into consideration the strategic implications
of the drift toward the political right in this country, and
the growing concentration of corporate, financial, and technocratic
power and its very undemocratic seizure of political power throughout
the world. The third edition of this booklet continues to be
a beginning point for those who wish to understand the historical
and political facts upon which our “reparations campaign” was
founded.
The New Panther Vanguard Movement believes that if one is to
intelligently analyze the various social problems confronting
African-Americans, and that if one is to define and develop
effective solutions, one must first start with the historical
and objective facts existing 400 years ago. Thus, the Intercommunal
Reparations Campaign of the New Panther Vanguard Movement is,
first and foremost, a conscious, grass-roots educational effort
directed at the African-American communities; it is founded
upon a very conscious, political, even revolutionary and comprehensive
strategy aimed at laying the foundation for fundamental social
changes in the world’s economy; and it is also a conscious “political
strategy” designed to promote principled “organizational unity”
within the African-American community and the development of
a “strategic political alliance” among Africans on the Continent,
Africans living in the Americas, and Indigenous People.
Our reparations campaign is also, necessarily, a short and
long-range fund-raising venture. In initiating its Intercommunal
Reparations Campaign, the New Panther Vanguard Movement is actively
carrying out Point One of our Ten Point Platform and Program:
“peace, justice and reparations.” The ultimate objective of
this Campaign is to intervene into the political processes of
American Society and the Global Economy so as to redress, once
and for all, the historical injustices perpetrated against People
of Color - Africans, African-Americans and Indigenous
people - and to end the present economic disparities afflicting
our diverse communities.
The New Panther Vanguard Movement, composed primarily but not
exclusively of African-Americans, believes that the descendants
of African slaves living in the Americas are in a strategic
position for formulating the strategy and implementing the tactical
alliances that are necessary to launch a coordinated and sustained
“intercommunal reparations campaign” so as to achieve the actual
“payment of reparations” for African-Americans, Africans throughout
the Diaspora, and other Indigenous People.
WHAT IS THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN AFRICANS,
AFRICAN-AMERICANS AND INDIGENOUS PEOPLE
IN THE STRUGGLE FOR REPARATIONS
Ironically, the term “African’ is not an African construction;
it actually comes from the Latin term “Africanus,” a Roman Emperor.
In fact the people living in what is now known as the continent
of Africa did not originally refer to themselves as “Africans.”
Think about that for a minute.
The peoples who inhabited the so-called North, Central, and
South American continental territories, and the Caribbean islands
[sometimes erroneously referred to as “natives’ or “Indians”]
were brutally subjected to virtual “extermination,” not only
physically in the millions; also destroyed was their relatively
peaceful, civilized, and prosperous way of life; not unlike
what was done to Africans, the economic, social, cultural and
religious institutions of these Indigenous people were dismantled
at gun point and with inhuman viciousness.
The struggle of Indigenous peoples in the so-called Third World,
sometimes referred to as the “undeveloped nations,” is quite
similar to that of so-called Africans. Whether we know it or
not, the struggles of Africans and other Indigenous people are
tied together historically; and they cannot be solved or successfully
brought to a conclusion separately. In reality, the social struggles
of Africans living in the Americas and that of the Indigenous
people, whose lands were forcefully taken by Euro-Americans,
in the name of “progress” and “civilization,” have from the
very beginnings in the early 1500’s been irrevocably intertwined
and interconnected. The truth of the matter is that the stolen
labor and land, from our African ancestors and Indigenous people,
are what has made possible this country’s status today as the
most advanced country on this earth, economically, technologically,
and militarily.
April - 2001
CONTINUED
